Eternal and Brief
by GuitarGirl97
Summary: Everything is both eternal and brief. That's what you told me. But I disagree- some things are not brief. When our two worlds collided, we found the eternal.
1. Chapter 1

**Disclaimer:** **I am not Lucy Christopher, 'Stolen' does not belong to me.**

 **Author Note:** **I first read Stolen years and years ago, and have loved it ever since then. I've wanted to write a fanfic for Stolen for a long time, but was never sure what approach to take or how to do it. Then listening to the Crowded House song 'Distant Sun' inspired this- it's a great song.**

 **This fic is quite disjointed, as it splits between Gemma writing to Ty and Gemma's firsthand POV. To clarify, anything in italics is Gemma writing to Ty.**

 **There is some swearing, staying true to the style of writing in 'Stolen', but nothing too bad.**

 **Thank you for reading.**

 _ **Everything is both eternal and brief- Ty, Stolen.**_

 _I know I said I wasn't going to write anymore, but ever since I typed those words and shut down the laptop, the feeling of wanting to continue has been nagging at me until I can't sleep or think or breathe without seeing those words in my mind. So final, so devoid of hope._

 _I don't know what I expect to gain from writing to you- tomorrow I will see you again in the confines of some grimy courtroom. Mum will be clutching my hand for as long as she can, her eyes wide and begging me to put an end to all this. Dad will be grim faced and tightly wound- he never used to have a temper, but now I swear if he could, he would kick the shit out of you for dragging me out of my life and into your own. They both seem to have changed, evolved, since they got me back. They seem fiercer, more protective, desperately loving. Have they changed? Or is it just my perspective that's been warped by you and your oh, so convincing lies? That's one thing I want to punish you for, Ty, this feeling of being a stranger around the people I love and know the most. It's as if your mentality and your world has bonded with mine- as if the magic of the land you love has somehow managed to enter my blood and flow round my body until my heart becomes as wild as yours._

 _I don't want to lose who I was; I want to return back to my old life, go back to being Gemma Toombs, boring as every other whingeing teenage girl. But now I've tasted the freedom of your world, my heart is refusing to go back into the restrictive confines of my old life._

 _Mum and Dad hate you._

 _They hate you for stealing their baby from them, for making them think I was gone forever, for letting them taste the bitter poison of regrets, of the endless questions and self doubt. They see a monster, a cold and cruel monster. But the judge won't ask Mum or Dad, or Mr Samuels, or even you. He'll ask me. And the trouble is, Ty, you haven't only screwed with my perception of the world, you've made me dumb and blind and clueless when it comes to you too. I know what they want me to say; that you're a monster, that you drugged me and took me away and forced me into a world of danger and fear. That's true- I hated you, I bloody hated you._

 _But at the same time, I owe you everything._

 _Why didn't you leave me at the mine site, or the hospital? Why did you obey the wishes of a half delirious girl, knowing full well that your dreams would be shattered, that you would be forcibly severed from the land and life you love so very much? Did you feel guilty- did you feel like you had to be stolen too, to show me you were sorry?_

 _No. That's a complete load of crap. You stayed with me because you cared. And I care about you, Ty, I really do. But I don't know if I have the power to manipulate the truth to let you escape to your red earth, back to the rocks and the spirits and the endless grains of burning sand._

 _I don't want to you go and leave me in this grey metropolis that feels like a clawing prison compared to the endlessness of your desert._

 _I don't want you to leave me, Ty._

 _How warped is that?_


	2. Chapter 2

**Disclaimer:** **I am not Lucy Christopher, 'Stolen' does not belong to me.**

It's just gone nine o clock, Monday morning. My face is still burning from the onslaught of reporters, now barred from sight by the doors of the foyer. Mum is tight lipped and anxious, Dad is grey faced and tense- me, I'm shaking. Mr Samuels greets us and speaks fast and urgent words to me, and I nod, pretending that his words have penetrated the thick fog that has settled over me and my mind. I'm stumbling, blind and deaf and dumb, too lost in the future to care about the present.

Mum and Dad leave me with reluctant eyes to go into the courtroom; Dad has his sinister face on again, and it makes my heart clutch. They love me so much and I love them- that's one thing you were wrong about, you know. Whatever mistakes my parents made, they love me- we're only human.

I sink onto the squeaky leather of a chair, waiting. It kills, these endless minutes that drag on, my mind bombarded by images of my parents distraught faces. But as much as the fictitious images of their horror and dismay make me want to puke my guts up and run a mile, the thought of you in chains is even worse. I remember your face as you ran beside me, leading the camel with urgent soothing noises, your eyes so resolved to do whatever it took to save me. It wasn't easy for you to leave your land behind- it sure as hell wasn't easy for you to nod and stay with me, knowing that as soon as we reached civilisation you'd be grabbed and shoved into a cell, accused of being some creepy kidnapping bastard.

But you still did it, because you cared, and you wanted to save me.

It won't be easy, lying to my parents and the court and forgetting all those moments when I wanted to rip your eyes out, to leave you a snivelling wreck on the floor. But I'll do it, Ty. I'll lie for you, make sure you are set free and can return to the land you love. Because that's the point, isn't it? You love with all your heart- foolishly, letting it make you do things you shouldn't. And now I'm doing the same, abandoning right and wrong for love. Stockholm Syndrome is the excuse they've handed to me, the easy excuse for why I feel like this for a man I should, a man I did, hate. But I'm fed up of deception and lies, Ty, and now I have the chance to save you as you saved me.

* * *

 _I love you Ty. I don't want you to go and leave me, but it's the best solution I've got for this hopeless mess we're in. Maybe in another place, another time, it could have been just you and me and the camel, living the life of freedom in that sandy expanse you call home. I know I'll wonder what life could have been like and wish for it until my heart aches- I already am._

 _It's like you said that night under the stars, everything is both eternal and brief. The reality, and the dream._

 _I love you Ty._

 _Thank you for showing me the truth._

 _Gemma._


	3. Chapter 3

**Disclaimer:** **I am not Lucy Christopher, 'Stolen' does not belong to me.**

The sun is persistent, strong and hot on my flushed skin, the heat of the pavement so great and intrusive that it seeps through the soles of my shoes and burns my feet. The odd, homely smell of traffic that rushes past me in a whizz of colour mingled with the choking fumes surrounds me. In the heat and the sun and the happiness, I'm free and I 'm not thinking too hard about anything.

People still stare at me. They still realise who I am and go quiet, their puzzled or care filled eyes fixed on my face as if they're thirsty for details, scavengers who will pick at dry bones for a shred of anything. And whilst it still bugs me and gives me a weird tingling sensation, as if their stares are actually brushing against my skin with a feather light touch, I've learnt not to show it. I'm safe, I'm free, and today is the last day of the sixth form and my A-Level exams are done. The summer air never tasted so sweet.

I'm alone as I walk the sunny, half filled streets home. Anna and Ben are too busy thrusting their tongues down each other's throats to walk with me, and I don't care anymore. It's funny, but when I came home from Australia and stepped out of the plane for the first time I saw the world with fresh eyes. Ben was suddenly nothing more than a fake, a poser- Anna was just another one of those friends you can only trust half of the time. Mum and Dad changed too- despite what happened in the courtroom, they didn't blame me.

When, after the hearing, I ran straight for the toilets and locked myself in a cubicle to cry my eyes out, Mum followed me in and even went as far to unpick the lock so that it was just me and her, locked in that skanky piss smelling public toilet, wrapped in each other and crying.

"Oh Gemma, Gemma, what has he done to you?" Mum whispered tearfully into my hair, and I felt her trembling as she held me and stroked me. "It's alright now, darling, it's over...we can leave this behind us..."

I knew she was upset with me without feeling her tears soaking into my clothes. When I had contradicted every case Mr Samuels had made, when I had walked in and seen _him_ tied up and had started to cry as I made a mad dash towards him trying to touch him and tell him it was going to be ok. When I recited my lies, I had made myself look anywhere but at Mum. She knew that it was a lie- I could tell from how she looked terrified and pressed her shaking hands to her mouth, speechless. I knew that she could see I was protecting him, the monster who had taken her baby away and let her think I was dead, and she didn't know why. She was powerless to stop me, to bring down the monster, and that was what fuelled the tears.

"Why, Gemma?" she asked in a broken voice into my shoulder. "Why did you do that?"

"You don't understand- you can't understand!" I had sobbed out. "He's not a monster, he's not! Don't you see? Being locked in a cell would kill him and I can't do that to him, he s-saved me and I-"

I managed to spare my Mum the pain of saying I loved him. But I knew, just from drawing back from her protective arms and seeing the mascara tear tracks scarring her familiar face, I might as well have said it. It would have made no difference- she was so upset, more by the fact she couldn't understand me and I couldn't explain it to her. I knew the kidnap had made her regret our relationship, all the things we had missed out on, and it was like she was trying to kid herself that she had a closer bond with me than she thought.

"They would help him, Gemma! You've got to understand, sweetheart, that what he did was not right- you are the victim here, not him Gemma, not him!" she sniffed and shakily wiped her streaming eyes, looking at me again with an imploring gaze. "I don't...I don't think I understand. Can't you tell me what happened- tell me why you feel he saved you, why you feel indebted to such a monster?!"

"Will it really make anything any better?" I asked numbly and Mum surprised me then.

"No, I suppose it won't." She said in a sad voice, before straightening her shoulders and drying my eyes as if I were a three year old. But it wasn't annoying- it felt nice. "Ok, Gemma. Ok. We'll get through this together- you know I'm not angry at you? I love you, darling, and I...I just want you to be happy. And if this 'saving' of him makes you happy...so be it. I won't question it anymore, if that makes you happy."

And she didn't question it anymore after that. There were times in the months that followed, times when I could almost see the words doing some macabre dance on the tip of her tongue, and I could see from her eyes that she was still desperately trying to understand me, and failing. That failure made her feel like a failed mother, I think. Those months right after the hearing...they were the hardest. Nothing seemed right, normal- no matter how hard I tried to kid myself, I would wake up every day and still feel that...that _disappointment_ that I was in a grey city rather than in a land of freedom and fire.

But, despite the constant press and the gawping stares from the people around me, despite the fact my own parents didn't understand me anymore, I got through it. There were shit times; screaming rows, crying for hours on end and being scared my eyes would never stop leaking tears I didn't know existed, my anger at the random people who looked at me for a little too long. I think I managed to turn everyone against me as I fought to muddle through those horrid months, lashing out again and again until the people around me couldn't take it anymore and had to leave before they punched me in the face.

The psychiatrist was the worse. Sessions that lasted centuries, every day after school in that neat little room that was always too warm and stuffy to the point the room was blurry and I had to run outside and gulp fresh air. I think I will always see that stupid flowery wallpaper whenever I close my eyes, I had to stare at it so much. Tiny little flowers, in pink and white, scattered over the wall in such a uniform pattern I even said aloud once; "Why is it so uniform? Where's the freedom, the wild? Where's the nature in that?"

Of course, the doc loved that. She never showed how annoyed she got with me as I refused to cooperate, never once ground her teeth or swore under her breath. I swore and ground my teeth and paced and shouted and cried, unleashing hell on that poor woman who never once crumbled. But I could see it in her eyes whenever I did cooperate and look at her- I was just another case of some mucked up teenage girl and she seemed to get the answers she wanted from anything I did, even just sitting there in stubborn silence.

"Gemma, I want to talk you to about the man who kidnapped you."

"He has a name."

"Yes." Scribble scribble scribble in her little notebook that I'm emotionally bonded with my kidnapper. "Would you prefer it if we called him that? Gemma? Ok, let's talk about him. What was he like?"

"You don't want me to answer honestly, do you? You just want me to tell you what you already decided! Well I'm not going to do that- screw you! You can just write whatever typical analyst crap you always write- Stockholm syndrome and bonding in times of distress and whatever the hell else you have all tried to tell me I've got!" I screamed at her, kicking my chair over and flying into a rage without warning. "You make me sick- you try to tell me what I am, what I've been through, how to feel! Can't you just accept that sometimes there is no rational reasoning behind it- can't you just accept that some things just happen?!"

"Who are you talking to now, Gemma?" she asked, her eyes never once showing any sign of anger, never crumbling at my pathetic show of being hard and tough and typical. She must have seen a thousand me's before, and I knew it. I think that's what I resented the most about her- she looked at me and she saw a puzzle to figure out, as if there had to be a reason, a logic to it all. "Who do you want to stop telling you what you are?"

"Everyone. Everyone!" I remember hissing at her, all curled up in the corner of the room, like a frightened animal, lashing out in anger to hide the terrifying fear beneath. She didn't try to approach me, which was good, because I think I would have cried if she had. "He never told me how to feel, what to do, who I was. He freed me."

"Why don't you tell me more about that, Gemma? What exactly did he free you from?" Scribble scribble scribble in her little notebook that I'm just another typical teen on a typical mental breakdown.

"You don't care. You just think I'm pathetic- another one of your usual cases who is mad and crazy and doesn't know what she's talking about! I'm just another person to you, another one of the same, but I was never that to him- I was unique to him!"

That was the point I ran out of the stuffy room with the hideously uniform wallpaper and gulped the polluted air into my lungs, tears streaming down my cheeks until the world became so blurry I couldn't see.

Most of the sessions were like that. She trying to deduce things from my anger, or my stony silence, or even simple things like the way I sat or the way my eyes glanced around the room. I don't remember what the final report said exactly; I know it suggested I had identity issues, and had bonded with my kidnapper because I was suffering emotional neglect, most likely due to the fact I had working parents and no siblings. That made me angry, the fact they could dream up some fantasy reason for my behaviour and then pin the blame on my parents for having careers and for not churning out a few more children. It was so typical of the cold world I'd left behind in the desert that I laughed and almost shared the tale of a boy caught in a net and dragged into the city with my parents. Almost. I managed to spare them that pain, at least.

But as with all shit times, they come to an end, and at the other side, things start to get better. I learned to wake up in the mornings and not give in to that sinking feeling as I heard the mechanical swoosh of cars on the road, or the telltale pigeon cooing outside of my curtains. I started to speak to my friends again, started to go out and socialise, started to have fun. I started to smile. And when I finally saw the sun again, I found that I could wear the ring born of the desert on my finger without feeling a traitor or hopelessly sad. It was as if I had been grieving, in mourning, not only for a person, but also for the parts of myself which had been hopelessly driven apart by two worlds colliding with me at the centre.

But, just like the plants of the desert, I could be brought back to life. Slowly, tentatively, I unfolded and grew, back into myself- back into Gemma Toombs. Only this time, as I grew, I grew up towards the sun, beyond the grey confines of the city and the material world. Behind my closed lids I still saw eternity- a vast sandy expanse of nature and nothingness- and I held onto that, feeling it burn its way into my heart. It brought together the two parts of me and made me whole again and my new, stronger self found that amusing, in a strange sort of way.

Because it seemed that, in the end, Ty had done what he had promised to do; he had saved me. Saved me from myself.


	4. Chapter 4

**Disclaimer:** **I am not Lucy Christopher, 'Stolen' doesn't belong to me.**

I walk down the busy pavements, avoiding the stares and the jostling elbows of the other pedestrians, and don't allow myself to make that fatal comparison between the unforgiving sensation of hard concrete and the soft, obliging texture of sand. I'm not letting myself think like that, not today, not when the air is so warm and unusually alive for the city. The city air is normally so flat and choked with dirt and grime, not electric and infinite like that of a rolling, endless landscape, where the heat is stifling and the air is thick and pulsating and _alive_. I smile at this unusually vibrant city day, loving the familiar comforts of city sights and smells and feelings, and as I cross over the road in a flurry of rushing feet and beeping car horns and people being people, I almost contemplate missing out the park from my walk home.

It's become a ritual of mine, a snatch of nature and freedom, to take a long route through the park on every walk through this urban maze. Though Prince's Park, with its gardeners and pristine hedges, is far from an untamed jungle, it is green and fresh, and providing that I time my visit just right, I can head to the bench right by the rhododendrons and I can sit in the solace of isolation and let my mind breathe.

Today as I walk the dusty pathways and dodge the toddlers on scooters and pushing small dollies in buggy's, there is something different in the air. It is that electric spark, that pulse of life, and it makes my heart quicken as I round the corner and walk to my rhododendron. By the time I smell the eucalyptus, I feel so dizzy I can barely stand.

There is a note resting on the peeling painted bench. A torn scrap of a note, upon which is written, in bad handwriting I have only ever seen engraved in the hot sand of an Australian desert, just three words.

'Thank you, Gem.'

The words are enough to let the tears spill out, but with a smile, as I take the paper and hold it to my heart.

"Thank you, Ty." I whisper. "Thank you, thank you, thank you..."

So in the same place we met, giving over a robins egg in the undergrowth of the towering pink flowers, we said our last goodbye, through a note and an unspoken promise that whilst there would be no meeting, no planned rendezvous, there would be endless possibility.


	5. Chapter 5

**Disclaimer:** **I am not Lucy Christopher, 'Stolen' doesn't belong to me.**

 _Everything is both eternal and brief. That's what you told me. But I disagree- some things are not brief. They are simply eternal._

 _We're saved, Ty, and there is a world of possibility out there, waiting for us. For although we will most likely remain apart, we will always have that moment under the stars, in a time and a place that will never belong to this world._

 _When our two worlds collided, we found something that no one else will ever be able to understand. It started as fear and hate and anger, but eventually, like a long dormant plant in the sun baked sand of the desert finally granted the vital drop of rain, we grew and we found something that can never be replaced._

 _I'm still sad. I'm still angry with you, in ways. But I'm not afraid anymore- I don't feel like a freak who doesn't understand her own mind. Because that is my conclusion- when our two worlds collided, we found the eternal._

 _Your fire still runs through my veins, your land has infected my heart, your presence still haunts my dreams. You will never leave me, Ty. Even if I never see you again, I have not lost you. We will always have that hidden place, that secret world between worlds, that place you showed me. I am forever grateful for that Ty. Forever, with all its endless possibility._

 _With all my love, and hope, and heart,_

 _Gemma._


End file.
